Sometimes, it can become painfully obvious when a filmmaker loses interest in a particular series. Dead or Alive: Final (2002), the third film in director Takashi Miike’s action series featuring Shô Aikawa and Riki Takeuchi, appears to suffer from lack of interest. Set 300 years from now in a run-down city in a post-apocalyptic world, […]
Mention the name of director Takashi Miike and bizarre visions of violence and depravity come to mind for many fans of his films. While Miike’s body of work certainly is filled with more than its share of unusual and disturbing imagery, it also has its softer moments. In Dead or Alive 2: Birds (Dead or […]
Director Takashi Miike is known for his often bizarre and violent films, but, as with George A. Romero’s zombies, the more exploitive aspects of Miike’s movies are generally in service to a broader social commentary. In Dead or Alive (1999), Miike throws his audience headfirst into the Tokyo underworld, where a gangster is waging a […]
Takashi Miike is an oddity, even within the Japanese film industry. Responsible for films like Audition and Ichi The Killer, Miike is known for taking ideas firmly rooted in Japanese culture and twisting them in the most brazenly bizarre fashion. Unfortunately, I’m more of a novice to Miike’s work, but judging from those I have […]
The trailer for legendary genre film director Takashi Miike‘s latest effort Yakuza Apocalypse promises absurdity, insanity, martial arts mayhem, yakuza vampires, and a big green cloth-suit frog. Hayato Ichihara stars as Kagayama, a young yakuza member who is suddenly promoted when his boss dies. The boss also passes on his legacy as a vampire to […]